Rick A. I’m always late to the party. I can tell you that George Reissfelder wasn’t one of the guys in the museum that night. For one thing he was too old (49 at the time of the robbery). But also, from the pictures I’ve seen of him he was too swarthy. Unsub #1 was very white, not an albino but his skin tone was whiter than Reissfelder’s. From the pictures I’ve seen William Merlino could have been unsub #1. It’s hard to say almost a quarter of a century removed from the incident, but out of all the pictures I’ve seen Merlino looks the closest to unsub#1. https://ulrichboser.com/gardner-heist-anniversary-update-investigative-angles/ Still not a final edit but here's the first few pages. Copyright © 2015 Richard E. Abath All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. "Pandora's Laughter" (Working Title) “23 years ago today, two men posing as Boston police officers bluffed their way into the museum by telling the night guards that they were investigating a disturbance. After tying up the security guards in the museum’s basement, the thieves spent 81 minutes seizing works of art now valued at more than five hundred million dollars. Among the stolen works were a Vermeer, three Rembrandts, five Degas, a Monet, a Flink, and two others. The theft is believed to be the largest property crime in history and is currently on the FBI’s top ten list of most significant art crimes. “ - Richard DesLauriers, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Boston office, 3/18/2013 Every picture has its shadows And it has some source of light Blindness, blindness and sight The perils of benefactors The blessings of parasites Blindness blindness and sight Threatened by all things Devil of cruelty Drawn to all things Devil of delight Mythical devil of the ever-present laws Governing blindness, blindness and sight Suntans in reservation dining rooms Pale miners in their lantern rays Night, night and day Hostage smile on presidents Freedom scribbled in the subway It's like night, night and day Threatened by all things God of cruelty Drawn to all things God of delight Mythical god of the everlasting laws Governing day, day and night Critics of all expression Judges in black and white Saying it's wrong, saying it's right Compelled by prescribed standards Or our own ideals we fight For wrong, wrong and right Threatened by all things Men of cruelty- drawn to all things Men of delight Men of the laws, the ever-broken laws Governing wrong, wrong and right Governing wrong, wrong and right Wrong and right - Joni Mitchell Prologue Brattleboro, Vermont is a funky town. Nestled in the southeast corner of the state, it's an artsy community with a population of about 7,500. The town is a living contradiction. It is simultaneously home to the longest run, worker-owned collective vegetarian restaurant in the country, as well as a 16-seat gourmet "diner" which often requires reservations three months in advance. Old hippies and punks rub elbows with the rich folks who visit or who moved to the Connecticut River Valley to get out of the rat race. A shabbily dressed person sitting in Mocha Joe's coffee shop typing away on a laptop is as likely to be a millionaire working on a memoir as an unemployed person working on a resume. Main Street has artisan shops and secondhand stores, Greek pizza joints, a Subway, a bead store, a head shop, five banks, as well as six or seven bars. I was standing on Main Street outside of Amy's Bakery on a sunny November day in 2007 because that's where I told the FBI I'd meet them. After 17 years of not hearing a word from the people charged with the task of solving the Gardner Museum Robbery, they popped up. They wanted to talk. I’d been waiting about ten minutes when I spotted a shiny, black, mid-size sedan with Massachusetts license plates coming down Main St. and parking about a half a block away from me. The two guys certainly looked the part as they stepped out of the car. They had short hair, were clean-shaven, wearing sharp-pressed dark suits and darker sunglasses. I wondered if they were required to dress like stereotypical G-men. "Hey guys! Over here," I shouted. "Hi Rick, I'm Special Agent Kelly. This is Special Agent Chizmaddi." We shook hands, and they gave me their cards. The younger-looking of the two, Chimzmaddi, asked, "How did you know who we were?" "Look around you," I said. "Do you see anyone else here who looks like you?" The agents gave a quick look around at a street full of people who looked a lot like me, aging hippies in tie-dyes with beards and long hair. Those who didn't fit that description were either hipsters or punks. The two agents were the only suits on the street, and people were starting to stare. They were outnumbered here. "Let's go in and sit down. You want some coffee?"Agent Kelly suggested. We got our coffee and after some brief chit-chat they informed me that the statute of limitations on the crime had long since run out. So anything I had to say, anything I might have held back, anything I might want to tell them, I couldn't get arrested for. In fact, I could feel free to admit anything short of murder without fear of prosecution. I informed them I was aware of that, but I'd already told the FBI everything I knew. "You know" Agent Kelly said leaning across the table. "We've never been able to eliminate you as a suspect." "So you guys have been keeping track of me all these years?" I replied. Agent Kelly nodded in the affirmative. "So you've been keeping track of my bank account?" Agent Kelly smiled a little and nodded "yes" again. "Are you impressed?" I asked. Agent Kelly said, "You should write a book." Chapter 1 "So what's your book about?" It's not a surprising question. When people find out you're writing a book they always want to know what your subject is. But this was Jim, my therapist. And it was only our third session together. I needed to learn new coping methods after being diagnosed with ADHD, combined type, severe. Medication helped, but I had 48 years of dysfunctional coping mechanisms I had to unlearn. I figured this session was blown; we wouldn't be talking about anything but the robbery for the next hour. "It's about the Gardner Museum Robbery," I said. It was obvious from his reaction that he didn't immediately remember it. That's also not surprising given how long ago the robbery occurred. I'm reminded of it every day, it was the most traumatic event of my life. But most people don't remember it until they see another news story. So I filled in the blanks. "It's a small museum, down in Boston, with one of the most amazing collections of art on the planet. It got robbed almost 25 years ago. It's the world's largest unsolved art theft. An estimated $500 million dollars worth of artwork was stolen. Three Rembrandt's, a Vermeer, a Monet, a bunch of sketches by Degas." "Oh, yeah," he said. "I remember something about that. You think there's interest?" "Well, I figure there will be. A lot of people blame me for it." Jim tilted his head to the side a little and his eyes narrowed looking at me intently. He probably thought I had paranoid delusions. "And why would people do that?" He asked. "Because I let the robbers in," I said, matter-of-factly. Jim's eyes were wide open now. "There were only four witnesses to the crime," I continued, "the two guards and the two thieves. I was one of the guards. No one else is going to write a book. The two thieves are probably either dead or in jail, and the other guard certainly doesn't want to write about it. He seems to have done as much as he can to avoid even being in the US. From what I've heard he spends most of his time at sea. He plays in a band on a cruise ship. I heard he only comes back to the US three times a year or so." "Wow! Ah, well. Wow! I'm just trying to get my head around this." A mixture of surprise, skepticism, and curiosity played across his face. That's also typical. How often do you meet someone who was responsible for the loss of an estimated half a billion dollars worth of artwork? "So, yeah, people tend to blame me for it." "How old were you? " Jim asked. "I was 23." "What? Do people think you should have had the wisdom of Solomon at 23? Did they tie you up? I mean, how did they do it?" "They showed up dressed as cops. They did it a little after midnight on St. Patrick's day, so the streets were full of drunks. And yeah, they handcuffed me and duck taped me to an electrical box in the basement for about 7 hours." "That must have been terribly traumatic for you. How do you feel about it?" And there was the question I get asked most often. The FBI, the Justice Department, the press, my friends, everyone wants to know how I feel about the robbery. The truth is that I've tried to avoid feeling anything about it. I've attempted to avoid realizing how close to death I might have been. How if one little thing had gone differently, if the other guard had fought back, if Anne Hawley, the museum director, and her boyfriend had shown up like they considered, any little thing could have sent the whole scene sideways. And then...who knows. While I was tied up, all I could do was hope that they didn't burn the place down. I can't imagine a worse end than being burned alive handcuffed to an electrical box. That's why I sang “I Shall Be Released” over and over and over that night. It kept me grounded. Kept me sane. Dylan was a lifeline out of that basement. It was the only connection to the outside world I could feel. That song was the only mental bridge out of the place where I feared I would die. So I've tried to keep a lid on all those feelings. At the same time, I've researched the crime. More thoroughly than a lot of people in the press have. They need to sell papers. Sensationalism can over-ride the truth of a news story. Especially a big one. It's easy for a reporter to get hooked on to one train of thought and ride it to its logical conclusion; even if it was a fantasy from the beginning. I don't know "who done it." I've always tried to leave that up to the professionals. I've never been trying to figure out "who done it." But I have always wondered why they did it. What was their payoff? There is a theory that people in the underworld use stolen artwork as a form of currency. Stolen art is a $5 billion dollar a year industry. It's the third most profitable crime worldwide ranking just behind drugs and illegal arms dealing. A few years after the Gardner Heist Attorney General Janet Reno coined the term "art terrorism," meaning art that's stolen to exchange for plea deals. Want to get out of a murder rap? If you know where a valuable stolen painting is you might be able to swing a deal. The problem is the people who robbed the Gardner didn't seem very savvy. If you want to use a stolen painting as a get out of jail free card why cut it out of the frame? They only cut paintings out of their frames in movies. In real life, it ruins the art. The thieves seemed to have had inside information about the museum, but I have to assume they didn't know there was no insurance on the artwork. Insurance money can be the payoff in such schemes. The only parties who have a vested interest in stolen art is the museum, the insurance company responsible for paying millions of dollars out in a claim, and the thieves. Insurance companies aren't supposed to pay off criminals. Publicly they have a "we do not negotiate" policy. But sometimes they do negotiate. Often it's a "reward for information leading to the recovery of" that's handed to the thieves. There have even been instances when museums and insurance companies deal directly with intermediaries. In December of 2002 the Tate Gallery in London negotiated a $5.6 million dollar deal with a lawyer in Frankfurt, Germany for the return of two J. M. W. Turner paintings stolen in the late 1990s. $5.6 M is roughly ten percent of the paintings estimated value, the going rate for stolen artwork according to the FBI's stolen artwork division. The museum gets their artwork back; the thieves get a couple million, the insurance company saves ninety percent of what they'd have to pay out legitimately; everyone's happy. But that wasn't possible in the Gardner case. Someone did anonymously contact the Gardner in 1994 with significant knowledge of the crime, saying they could facilitate the return of the stolen artwork. They wanted $2.6 million dollars and immunity from prosecution. But in 1994 the reward was only $1 million dollars, and the FBI was not willing to grant immunity. The deal evaporated. There's no market for paintings that recognizable, that famous. There are countries like Brazil and Japan, which have a very short statute of limitations on stolen art. Technically you can legally sell stolen artwork after two years in some places. But realistically, one can't sell stolen Rembrandt's on the open market. So you have to wonder, what the hell were they thinking? What were they planning on doing with this stuff? Did they even have a plan to get rid of the art before stealing it? There are plenty of theories. This crime has left a trail of death and destruction in its wake. The deaths have occurred at the hands of organized crime figures. Take Charlie Pappas, a drug smuggler with ties to organized crime: He was found beaten with multiple gunshot wounds in the trunk of an abandoned car the night before he was going to testify against a suspect in the Gardner robbery. Or Lenny DiMuzio, a member of Patriarca family underboss Carmello Merlino’s crew. DiMuzio was found beaten, with multiple gunshot wounds, in the trunk of an abandoned car after an informant told the FBI that DiMuzio had something to do with the Gardner robbery. Or Bobby Donati, a Boston area gangster with a long rap sheet including multiple thefts and armed robberies, also found dead in the trunk of an abandoned automobile. He was hogtied, stabbed multiple times, and his throat was slit. The rumor was that he got hit because he’d planned on giving the authorities information on the Gardner robbery. Are you noticing a pattern? Most of the destruction people have done to themselves. Being obsessed with this crime isn't a healthy pastime. Harold Smith was a detective for Loyd's of London for 50 years. He was a security consultant for Christie's, Sotheby's, the Getty Museum, the Smithsonian, and other well-known institutions. Despite being retired, he took a personal interest in solving the Gardner robbery. He spent years and a considerable amount of his own money traveling the globe, talking to art thieves and people who fence stolen art, even to Scotland Yard detectives. In the end, he was probably no closer to finding out the truth than when he started. Shortly before he died, he had come to the conclusion that the paintings never left the Museum. He believed they were hidden in the heating ducts, despite the fact that the museum replaced the entire heating system after the robbery. Ulrich Boser, a writer and editor for USA Today, was given Harold Smith's notes after Smith passed away. Boser became similarly obsessed. "I was consumed by the heist – it had wormed its way into almost every waking moment. Sometimes I would get up at four-thirty in the morning to start chasing suspects, a quick break for lunch, a quick break for dinner, and when I went to sleep I would try and calculate how many hours I had worked that day. Was it seventeen or eighteen? Does eating lunch while reading a book on [Whitey] Bulger associate Keven Weeks count? Had there been a time during the day when I wasn't thinking about the lost paintings? One evening, my wife pulled me aside. 'You need to take breaks,' she told me. 'You need to shower every two days.'" (Boser, The Gardner Heist, p 203) The robbery ruined the life of one of my best friends. Johnny wanted to be a conservator. He loved the museum and wanted to work his way up from being a guard to a job conserving and restoring the paintings. But after the robbery, he couldn't continue working at the Gardner. Even though he wasn't there the night of the robbery, even though he didn't have anything to do with the crime, he felt responsible. We all felt we bore responsibility for anything that happened on third shift. It's like working in a nursing home: you might not be there the night someone passes, but you still feel like you were part of it. Johnny's obsession with the crime has led him to drink, heavily and daily. He was appalled when he realized that the FBI considered him a suspect. He went to the Bureau with the idea of trying to help them figure it out. He had a "we're all in this together" attitude. But he soon came to the conclusion that the FBI was looking to pin the crime on someone. He's often called me over the past 25 years, and the subject is always the Gardner Heist. Not exclusively, we talk about other things. But the conversation always winds around to the robbery eventually. In the middle of a discussion about music he'll pop out with, "What the fuck did they want with that pedophiles' sketches?" "Huh?" "Aw man you know, what the fuck was his name? That fucking pedophile who drew all those naked little boys.." "Degas?" I suggest. "Yeah! That's him. That fucking pervert. Why did they want that shit?" "Fuck if I know Johnny, honestly..." "Did you notice that it was all Dutch shit they stole?" "Well, not everything." I start. "Well no, but the shit that mattered, all Dutch. The other shit was just trinkets, pocket change, ya know? Stuff to cover up and confuse the issue. And you know why?" "I got no idea Johnny." "I'll tell ya why..." "I know you will." I insert. "Ha! Fucking funny dude, I love you man. But you know, it wasn't really a robbery. It was an act of vandalism." "Vandalism?" "Yeah, it's genius. It was revenge, retribution, shit like that. The Bush family couldn't stand it." "The Bush family? You mean like George W.?" "Yeah, they got outbid by Isabella on one of the Rembrandts. Old man Bush, what's his name? Prescott or some shit like that. He got outbid by her. He didn't get the painting he wanted, got outbid by a woman; they couldn't stand it. The family held that grudge, eventually they saw their chance and got back at her." "And that's vandalism, not art theft?" "Dude, they trashed the paintings in the Dutch room. That was the only shit they fucked up. They took everything else, but they cut the shit out of the stuff from the Dutch room. And that was the shit that had all the value. Everything else is probably stashed away in their fucking beach house in Kennebunk." His theories have changed over the years; they continue to spiral outwards. They get more complicated as time progresses. I tried to find out if Prescott Bush was ever outbid by Isabella Stewart Gardner but haven't come across anything. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but it doesn't mean it did either. So how do I feel about it? I'm glad it hasn't destroyed my life. [The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book on the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery. 13 years ago today I was seeking refuge from the world. I was trying to escape the grip of the the FBI and the press. I thought if I cut myself off from the world I could write about my experiences. Unfortunately I found out on my first day of solitude that the world is not so easily escaped.] When I left Oregon, I moved back to Brattleboro, Vt. My X had arranged for me to share an apartment with an old friend of ours. It was a two bedroom with a big kitchen and a small living room in a house on Elliot Street. Brattleboro, Vermont is a funky town. Nestled in the southeast corner of the state, it’s an artsy community with a population of about 7,500. The town is a study in contrasts. It is simultaneously home to the longest-run, worker-owned collective vegetarian restaurant, as well as a 16-seat gourmet “diner” which often requires reservations three months in advance. Old hippies and punks rub elbows with the rich folks who visit or who moved to the Connecticut River Valley to get out of the rat race. A shabbily dressed person sitting in Mocha Joe’s coffee shop typing away on their laptop is as likely to be a millionaire working on their memoir as an unemployed person working on their resume. Main Street is crowded with artisan shops and secondhand stores, Greek pizza joints, a Subway, a bead store, a head shop, five banks, as well as six or seven bars. Elliot Street was one of the “bad sections of town.” Bad is a relative term. Compared to any major city in America, Brattleboro didn’t have any bad sections. No one was going to get shot just for being on Elliot Street, you could walk down the street at any hour of the day or night and know that you weren’t going to get mugged. The houses were a little run-down, people occasionally played their music too loud, no one complained, everyone minded their own business, and the rent was cheap. I lived there for two years and worked as a selector at an organic food warehouse. But I was in my thirties and hard labor was taking its toll on me. I had a series of repetitive-motion injuries, a couple bouts with tendentious, and was working on sciatica in my lower back. I had been to almost every physical therapist in town and eventually wound up in the hospital. They did a series of stress tests on me. The physical therapist at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital told me I had three options. 1) train like an athlete to do my job, 2) find a new line of work, or 3) keep doing what I was doing and end up disabled. I went for door number two. I quit my job, took a job as a cashier at the local 7-11, and enrolled at the Community College of Vermont. But I wanted more of a change. I wanted to start writing about my experiences. I figured I had a good shot at getting a book published, I had a unique point-of-view on the biggest unsolved art crime in history. I decided that in order to accomplish that goal I needed solitude. There were plenty of cabins in the small towns around Brattleboro. There were lots of heavily wooded areas no one would recognize as proper towns which afforded the privacy I was seeking. But getting into a cabin involved knowing the right people or being in the right place at the right time. So I asked around, and kept asking around. One night towards the end of August, Martin – someone I’d known for years – was visiting to play some music and hang out. He lived in just the kind of cabin I was hoping to move into. So I asked him how he got into his cabin. “I’m looking to move back into town. If you want I can hook you up with the landlord, tell him you’ll be moving in, and we can just switch places.” It seemed like the perfect solution for both of us. So we both packed up our stuff over the next few weeks and moved them to our respective destinations. The cabin was in West Halifax, VT. It was one room, about 12 feet by 20 feet, with a kitchenette and a loft. Nice and cozy. It was right off the road on about 2 ½ acres of land with a brook running through the backyard. There was electricity and a phone hook up but no cable or available TV of any kind. Because of the phone hook up I had internet. But because of the distance between the cabin and the phone company 15K was the best speed I could get. There was running water which came from a well, it was the best water I have ever tasted in my life. West Halifax is where two dirt roads cross in the woods. Town center consists of the town offices, the town garage, and the grade school. After grade school all the kids got bussed into Brattleboro for middle school and high school. Every resident got a free Post Office box in the town offices. There was no town trash pick up you had to take your own trash to the dump. Deer, fox, and bear were common sights, occasionally a moose wandered by. The owner of the cabin lived in Manhattan, I had to mail him the deposit and first month’s rent. Unfortunately my previous landlord was in no hurry to get me my security deposit back. I went back and forth with both landlords on the phone trying to work the finances out. After a couple weeks of trying to get my security deposit back from my landlord I decided I’d just have to pay for the cabin deposit myself. It stretched me pretty tight. I didn’t have any savings and I took a large cut in pay going from warehouse work to the minimum wage cashiering job. But the landlord told me that he had other people interested in the cabin and if I wanted it I’d have to get him the money by the next day. So I had to get up early the next morning, head into Brattleboro, and send him the check express mail overnight. I spent most of my first night there in the backyard by the fire pit. I cooked myself a steak over the open flames and watched the stars go by. I felt at peace and hopeful, two things I hadn’t felt in a long time. I drifted into the cabin, set the alarm for 10:00 AM, turned on some music, and went to sleep. I woke up the next morning a half-hour before the alarm rang. It was a crisp autumn morning. A flock of Canadian geese were winging their way south. The leaves were just beginning to turn and the sky was crystal blue as I drove down the dirt road to town with my CD player cranked listening to Joni Mitchell’s Blue. I wasn’t in any hurry. I didn’t have to work. So I meandered down the road enjoying every twist and turn. I couldn’t believe I was living in such a beautiful place and just 20 minutes outside of Brattleboro. I got to the Post Office at about 10:15. It was packed but I wasn’t going to let that dampen my spirits. I filled out the overnight express envelope as I waited on line. When I got up to the counter I said, “I want to overnight this to Manhattan.” “OK, that’ll be $12.99. It’ll get there within three days,” the teller said. “Well no, I want to overnight it. Its’ got to get there tomorrow,” I said getting a bit frustrated. The teller looked frustrated also, “Well you can’t expect us to be able to guarantee that, it will get there within three days. That’s the best we can do.” “Yeah, well Fed Ex CAN guarantee it overnight.” I snapped as I snatched up my check and headed for the door. “Good luck.” The teller said to my back. I couldn’t believe it. “No wonder the Post Office is having so much trouble,” I thought. The Fed Ex was just on the other side of town. I still had plenty of time to get my check sent and secure my place in the woods. In contrast to the Post Office, Fed Ex was empty. I went right up to the counter. “I need to overnight this to Manhattan,” I said for the second time that morning. “Wow, I don’t know man. We’ll do the best we can but there’s no guarantee.” Now I was really confused. “Dude, your slogan is, ‘When it absolutely, positively has to get there overnight’ right? Well this absolutely, positively has to get there overnight.” The guy behind the counter just blinked at me then said, “You don’t know?” “Know what?” The guy picked up a remote control and turned the TV on. “There’s people flying planes into buildings in New York. The World Trade Center is gone, man.” I turned around, looked at the TV screen, and saw what everyone else in America had been watching all morning; what I had missed during my first twenty-four hours of solitude. I saw the smoldering ruins and heard the commentary, “I can just tell you – a, as US officials are telling me – a that – a this is clearly not an accident in their view and they do believe that terrorism is at the root of this. They believe this is a terrorist act, however they have very little information.” The CNN reporter droned on as they played the video clip of the plane crashing into the tower over and over. “Well, do the best you can.” I said. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. No one in New York is going to be expecting to get their mail on time today.” The Fed Ex guy said. “No, I suppose not.” I mumbled. As I payed I thought about my cousins who lived in the city and wondered if they were OK. My parents grew up in New York City, my father in Queens and my mother in Brooklyn. We visited a couple times every year when I was young. I remembered being a kid and watching the World Trade Center being built. I wasn’t sure how I was feeling as I got back into my minivan. I experienced such a mix of emotions. Anger, confusion, and loss, an incredibly deep feeling of loss, like something had been stolen from me. I didn’t want to hear the barrage of news coverage I knew would be on the radio. I put disk two of Genesis The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway into the CD player,“I see faces and traces of home… BACK IN NEW YORK CITY!” An excerpt from the Nonfiction book I'm working on about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery. The Christmas Eve Party I was told Lyle wanted to see me. The Security Director’s office wasn't in the museum proper. It was in the Carriage House, which was where Isabella stored her carriage and stabled the horses that pulled it back in the day. But it had long since been converted to office space. As I entered I saw Lyle looking down at his desk, head cradled in hand, his thumb and middle finger on his temples, nodding his head “no” slowly; he looked tired. Not that I blamed him, the museum had just been robbed. I don’t imagine he was sleeping much at the time. Lyle wasn't a bad guy to work for, he seemed to appreciate that we cared enough to bother writing regular updates on the museum’s water damage in the security logs. I said, “You wanted to see me, Lyle?” He looked up. On his face was a mixture of sadness and confusion. All he said was, “a Christmas Eve party?” I knew what he was talking about; we had a small party in the museum three months ago. Nothing big, just a few friends. Apparently the FBI had been going over the alarm records (something Lyle didn't do, that’s how we could get away with a party in the first place). I could only nod. “But… why?” I stared down at me feet. On Christmas Eve of 1989 Ukiah House was jamming quietly. Not our normal basement party with five kegs and three bands open to anyone with five bucks who wanted to rock out all night; but a more sedate gathering of our trusted friends, the whole house open to all invited. Someone in the kitchen was busy boiling about a pound of mushrooms down to a blue, tinted goo on the stove. And, in due time, this goo got put into tea cups and passed around the crowd of 10 or 15 people in the kitchen; we had sipped and passed, sipped and passed. I’m not sure how many times we sipped or passed. I do remember breaking off from the crowd in the kitchen and going to relax on the couch in the living room. Some of my housemates were into tie-dying at the time. It was a good, legal source of quick cash when we went off to catch a few Grateful Dead shows. One of their huge tie-dyed sheets was hanging on the wall across from the living room couch, a vastly colored, multi-spiraled, swirling affair that I was soon lost in. As I was tripping on it, one of the colors appeared to have broken off a bit. I looked at it closely, and yes, it had definitely moved. So I tried to consciously move another colored piece with my mind. It worked! It was like sliding an oddly shaped colored transparency over another colored transparency. The shapes stayed the same, but the colors changed as they slid over each other and blended together. I watched the sheet undulate as the colors slowly slid over each other in a kind of hallucinogenic pigment orgy, and eventually I was looking at a totally different tie-dye. Just then Johnny poked his head into the living room, “We gotta go man, the cab’s waitin’.” The tie-dye popped back into its original configuration. Go? Cab? Oh, yeah work… we had to guard the museum tonight; holiday pay was in the air. And we had planned on having a few people over tonight to trip out in the Gardner. It wasn't uncommon for people to drop by on third shift, Anne Hawley the Museum Director often stopped by late. Most of the staff stopped by at one time or another. In fact just about everyone had stopped by except Lyle, the one person who probably should have dropped in unannounced. We figured we were safe to have a party, nobody was showing up to put in extra hours on Christmas Eve. Johnny stashed a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin under his coat and we headed out into the Allston night. The lights were flashing by outside the cab window and I was catching neon trails all the way down Commonwealth Avenue as we headed towards Kenmore Square. The whole city looked to me like a breathing, neon painting. As if Jackson Pollock,Van Gough, and Quentin Moseley had collaborated on presenting Boston that evening. We got dropped off on the Fenway, a couple blocks west of the Gardner. Johnny must have paid the cabbie, I sure as hell didn't. I was too busy trying to negotiate my way out of the cab. Johnny grabbed my arm to help me out. There was a strip of grass between the road and the sidewalk that appeared to be filled with some kind of green, writhing tendrils. Like a gangrenous giant had been eviscerated on the spot, recently, but his body had been removed from the scene of the crime. It was grotesque, yet I couldn't look away. Johnny glanced down to see what I was staring at. “Yeah, I know,” he mumbled, “just don’t look at it. Come on, we’re late.” As he grabbed my arm and pulled me off to work. We relieved the guards on the shift before us. Bonnaventura was one of them; at least I have a memory of seeing his face with a rather concerned expression on it. I’m sure he knew we were fried, but he wouldn't say anything; the dude was a cokehead. Sometimes it’s hard to report someone for sins you’re guilty of yourself, even if it is your job. We got everyone shooed out and turned on appropriately trippy lighting. We lit the electric candles and some of the track lighting to illuminate the walkways, but kept direct light away from the paintings. Everything in the museum seemed to be glowing from an inner light. The paintings were starting to breath. A short time after our shift started Eli, his brother Aaron, and two girls from the museum school (Katie and Suzie I think were their names) came by. Eli would soon be a guard there himself, the Gardner would hire Aaron to work in the cafe'. But, as District Attorney Mike Kelly would later say, this wasn't a community outreach program, this wasn't a job fair, this was a party. Johnny pulled out the bottle of gin and something more, a carafe of the mushroom tea that had been brewed up in our kitchen at home. We drank the tea and washed it down with the gin out of the paper cups from the water cooler. Eventually, everyone just wandered quietly off in their own direction to explore the museum and trip out. I remember sitting on the stone throne in the courtyard, playing piccolo, and watching Aaron walk across the mosaic in front of me. That was Caesar Augustus’ bath house floor. I thought, “Oh, that can’t be good for that.” But it was a tile bath house floor, made for walking on. Still it probably hadn’t been walked on in centuries. The majority of the night our friends just wandered around quietly, occasionally ooooh-ing. We passed each other in the night, literally, often giggling. No one freaked out; it was quiet, mellow, and respectful. It was a wonderful thing to be in there, basically alone, tripping among all that antiquity. Some of the paintings were painfully beautiful. The Violin Note by Whistler with its pallet of blues and violets contrasted with the mute browns of the background undulated in the Veronese Room. The beautiful stained glass window in the Chapel Room no longer required sunlight passing through it to cast its colors on the floor. The Gothic Room was like stepping into Heaven. It was full of iconic scenes from the Bible rendered in stained glass, tempera, and gold. "Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples", "The Presentation of the Christ Child in the Temple", "Scene from the life of St. John of Damascus", and in the corner a life size, full body, portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner herself, painted by John Singer Sargent watched over everything. She smiled at me, gave me a little wink and a nod of approval and I drifted on. The mushrooms caused me to feel all that beauty radiating through my body. The pretenses of the museum were washed away and the art stood on it’s own merit, alone and alive, the striking visuals beaming through eternity as Isabella had wished. At some point my sequential perception of time broke down. All I experienced for a while was disjointed scenes: the girls whispering in front of a painting, Eli appearing out of the darkness on the second floor and saying, “HOWDY RICK!” with a big apish grin on his face, the deep reddish glow of the faint light off the floor tiles in the Dutch Room, Johnny laughing hysterically (at what I no idea). My friend Ed showed up just before dawn with someone we didn't know. An odd squirrely kid who seemed out of place and nervous; we trusted Ed, but had no idea who the other dude was. They got some mushroom tea with gin and a short tour, the next shift was going to show up soon. We scooted everyone out and turned off the lights. I picked up a cup of water from off the guard desk. I was parched; I went to chug it down and got a bitter, burning taste. Gin went all over the place as I coughed & spit. When I was expecting gin last night I drank it down like water, but when I was expecting water and got gin, it was some of the most evil fluid I’ve ever tasted. Johnny was snoring in the chair, feet propped up on the guard desk. Paper cups and gin everywhere around the security area. Ashtrays were full and in view, the empty Gin bottle sitting prominently on counter of the security desk. The place was a mess. I ran around like a madman cleaning up and Johnny woke up just in time to let the next shift in. “Hey good mornin’ Meeeeeery Christmas.” Johnny said to the guard relieving us. “Merry Christmas, quiet night?” “Yup, it was a quiet night.” So when Lyle asked, “But… why?” I stared down at my feet, embarrassed for putting Lyle in the position of having the FBI tell him what was happening right under his nose. We never expected he'd find out. If it weren't for the FBI going over the alarm records, he never would have. “Because we could,” was all I said.